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Announcing a Deal I’ve Wanted to Talk About for a Year

Both Sides of the Table

Because I am true to the hiring practices I preach, I wanted a strong exec who would “ punch above their weightclass ” by taking a job they hadn’t yet done but would hugely aspire to and thus work harder to out perform. I acted as the occasional mentor, advisor and coach to Ethan. The company was called Red Beacon.

CTO Coach 359
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Be Careful About Being a Meddling Startup CEO

Both Sides of the Table

In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. So he would allocate say – 20% to sales, 15% to marketing, 20% to eng priorities, 10% to customer support, 10% to ops, 20% to ‘platinum customers’ and maybe 5% directly to me as the CEO.

Startup 150
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8 Tips To Get the Most Out of Your Investors and Board

Both Sides of the Table

In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. Partly out of the fact that in 1 week I depart for England to speak at LeWeb, attend our DataSift board meeting and generally make myself available to the DataSift team to meet their customers, partners and employees. Ask them for a meeting to review your pricing strategy with you.

Tips 365
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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Both Sides of the Table

Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal. He looked stunned.